"The thing had happened"

[Mark Kohut]

Who here who knows Oppenhiemer on 'the thing' is not reminded closely?
Except for
the uplift at the end ala Werner Von Braun.

On Mon, Feb 17, 2020 at 9:32 AM Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Here is the beginning of Teilhard's essay from September 1946:
> >
> > ONE EARLY DAWN in the “bad lands“ of Arizona, something over a year ago,
> a
> > dazzling flash of light, strangely brilliant in quality, illumined the
> most
> > distant peaks, eclipsing the first rays of the rising sun. There
> followed a
> > prodigious burst of sound. … The thing had happened. For the fist time on
> > earth an atomic fire had burned for the space of a second, industriously
> > kindled by the science of Man.
> >
> >          But having thus realized his dream of creating a new
> > thunderclap, Man, stunned by his success, looked inward and sought by the
> > glare of the lightning his own hand had loosed to understand its effect
> > upon himself. His body was safe; but what had happened to his soul?
> >          I shall not seek to discuss or defend the essential morality of
> > this act of releasing atomic energy. There were those, on the morrow of
> the
> > Arizona experiment, who had the temerity to assert that the physicists,
> > having brought their researches to a successful conclusion, should have
> > suppressed and destroyed the dangerous fruits of their invention. As
> though
> > it were not every man’s duty to pursue the creative forces of knowledge
> and
> > action to their uttermost end! As though, in any event, there exists any
> > force on earth capable of restraining human thought from following any
> > course upon which it has embarked!
> >
> >
> > And the first explosion of an atom bomb "something over a year ago", July
> > 16, 1945, was neither in Arizona nor in Nevada but
> > in New Mexico.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Am Fr., 14. Feb. 2020 um 14:03 Uhr schrieb ish mailian <
> > ishmailian at gmail.com>:
> >
> >> And, this explains why other strong readers here have recognized that
> >> Pynchon's affinities with Emerson, for example, and with James and
> >> Dewey and Darwin, and with Chardin too, have to do with this notion
> >> that we evolve creatively, there may not be a Telos, in Chardin's
> >> sense, or even in the sense of consciousness, Atman or whatever, but
> >> the creativity, as Pynchon says of Education when he cites Henry Adams
> >> evolves and evolves.
> >>
> >> On Fri, Feb 14, 2020 at 7:55 AM ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > A Jesuit AND a Scientist. And, as he makes an appearance in GR, and as
> >> > Jesuits are important to Pynchon's novels and as his ideas influenced
> >> > many of P's generation, including, of course, Don DeLillo (_Point
> >> > Omega_), note that the title of DD's novel reverses a concept known as
> >> > the Omega Point, much as Pynchon reverses Teilhard's Return in GR;
> >> > Teilhard believed the universe was evolving towards a greater level of
> >> > complexity and consciousness, so the essay or Chapter in question,
> >> > Chapter 8 of the famous book both authors use and reverse,  _The
> >> > Future of Man_, a book a lot of hip people were digging back when GR
> >> > was composed, is used thematically, in an inverted madness it haunts
> >> > the American Landscape and Consciousness, as an haunting inversion-- a
> >> > psychological and physical entropy, an escape-velocity- history of no
> >> > future on Earth.
> >> >
> >> > Why would he argue that it is impossible to stop the bomb project?
> >> >
> >> > Now there's the rub, there's the connection to C.S.  Peirce and the
> >> > American metaphysical branch of philosophy. This is how it becomes
> >> > clear that Peirce is more likely, as Mark has intimated, a parodic
> >> > figure.
> >> --
> >> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >>
> >
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>